Visiting the Stars
by Ninasaurrr
Summary: "Amy, I…I want to see the stars." At seventeen years old, Amelia Pond lost her best friend. Not Melody, but Cassandra Blake, diagnosed with stage IV thyroid cancer. On her deathbed, Amy promised Cassie that she'd see the stars – now with the Doctor's help, she will.
1. Prologue

"Doctor…?"

"No, nope, stop right there – you have that slight tone to your voice like you're going to ask me to do something bad, something wrong, and my answer is nope – nope, I won't do it."

"But Doctor – what if this did more good than bad?" Leaning back against the TARDIS console, Amy ducked her head down in an attempt to catch the Doctor's eye. He stared resolutely ahead, fiddling with the…the thingymawotsit. Sighing and rolling her eyes, Amy stamped across the room and slumped over on the chair. "You're no fun anymore."

"Hey!" The Doctor spun around, scowling at her with his finger raised and pointed. "I am many things, especially fun. I am very fun, actually – so fun I make the funnest human alive look….boring and…and dull!"

"Doctor, I owe someone a favour. A promise. A pinky promise, actually, and you can't break one of those. Or you're not supposed to – but I did, and I'd really, really like the chance to change that. So please? Help me?" Amy stood up, batting her eyelashes as she closed the distance between herself and her raggedy man. Looking up at him, she blinked her eyes a few more times, bottom lip trembling.

"Please, Doctor? Help a friend out – a best friend-"

"I feel like there's something you're not telling me –"

"You know, if you won't help, I guess I'll just have to bring up the fact that you left a poor, defenceless seven-year-old alone on her back garden at all hours of the night-"

"Pond-"

"- out in the cold, wet rain; a harsh wind blowing through her split-ends-"

"Amy-"

"- split because she was left to live with her old grandma who had no money to send her to a hairdressers-"

"Amelia-"

"-or the eyesight and skill to cut it herself. The girl was mercilessly teased for this, as well as the fact that she was convinced she'd met a strange man in a blue box-"

"Fine! Fine, we'll go. When and where?"


	2. Cassie

_All heads are bowed in silence_  
_To remember her last sentence_  
_She answered him knowing what would happen_  
_Her last words still hanging in the air_  
_In the air_

"There she is." For an hour the trio had been scouring the thirteenth floor of the hospital, knocking on doors, murmuring apologies, and avoiding the hawk-eyed nurses making their rounds. At the age of seventeen, Amy had known this ward like the back of her hand – sometimes she'd spend entire weeks in there, plaiting patients' hair and reading to them - it may as well have been her second home. But coming back to it, Amy wondered how she'd managed to stick it out that long; every surface was white and squeaky clean, the smell of sick barely masked by a heavy layer of bleach; it was as intoxicating as it was suffocating, and the mere smell of it now made her want to vomit. But back then...back then, it had been her world. Or rather, that one girl had been her world.

Amy had met Cassandra Blake during their ninth year at school. Due to being diagnosed with cancer at the age of ten, her parents had removed her from the schooling system. However, at age fourteen the cancer had gone into remission, and Cassie's parents had reluctantly put her back into school. Since Melody had been suspended for graffiting the head teacher's office, there had been an available slot in Amy's form, and since Amy didn't have her best friend around, she'd taken Cassie under her wing. They grew inseparable, and when Cassie's cancer recurred, Amy felt like the bottom had fallen out of her life.

"Amelia," the Doctor grabbed Amy by the wrist and yanked her away from the doorway, pulling her out of her reverie. "You never said you would already be here-"

"Well I thought that would be pretty obvious? This is when I promised her – when I promised she'd see the stars," Amy wrestled her arm free and walked back over towards the room. She hovered by the window overlooking the room, watching her younger self grip the pale hand of the girl in the bed. Even from a distance Amy could see the beads of sweat perforating the young girl's forehead, the unhealthy yellow tinge to her skin; you could tell that she was dying.

"Two months after this she passed away," Amy murmured quietly, raising her hand and pressing it to the glass, as if this could bring her closer to her old friend. "We thought it'd be sooner than that, but she'd always been a fighter and – oh God, I'm talking about her in the past tense." A warm hand pressed itself to her arm, and Amy turned into the open arms of her husband. Rory drew her in close, resting his chin on top of her head as he turned to look at the Doctor.

"What's the problem, Doctor? With there being two Amy's?"

"A number of things could go wrong, you've got to understand – never mind the confusion for others if they see the same person in two different places at once, but if the two Amy's meet, their brains would scramble, and - and if they touched, then the entire time continuum could fall apart, creating a paradox. Paradoxes are dangerous, Rory, very dangerous."

"So what you're saying is, we have to keep them apart, yeah? If we did that then we could get Cassie and go?" The Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair in exasperation.

"Yes, but I don't really think we should-"

"Great! Okay, great! So you take Amy Number Two-"

"Hey! Why can't I be Amy Number One, huh?"

"-fine, fine! You take Amy Number One and I'll go and distract Amy Number Two so that you two can get Cassie, alright?" Thrusting Amy into the Doctor's arms, Rory took off round the corner, and the pair watched as he began talking to the younger Amy.

"Amy?"

"Mm?"

"Did your incapable husband just come up with a brilliant and kind of plausible plan?"

"Yup. I've taught him well," checking that Rory and her other self were by the vending machine, backs to the room, Amy slipped into the hospital room, shutting the door quietly behind her. Taking up the seat that younger Amy had just vacated, she slid her hand into Cassie's clammy palm, immediately remembering its shape and texture. She squeezed it once, and watched as her best friend's head slowly rolled to the side, deep blue eyes focusing on her face. A soft smile slowly spread across her lips.

"Who was that?"

"Um – what?"

"The door? Someone came to the door, you said –" a sharp cough rattled her skinny frame, and Amy had to resist the urge to throw herself across her body, as if by shielding her from the world she could protect her.

"Oh, yeah – it was just some nurse. A pretty hot one at that," she winked, causing a giggle to bubble out of Cassie. "He was just reminding me that visiting hours are nearly over." Cassie pulled a face.

"I don't want you to go," she sighed. "God, I hate being stuck in here. Who knows how much longer I have to live? I don't have time to waste away in this rut! I want to go places, I want to see things, Amy, I…I want to see the stars." It was now or never.

"Cass?"

"Mhm?"

"How would you feel about getting out of here?"

"Right now?"

"Yes; right now."


End file.
